Science Cafe: Risky Decisions

Science Café

do 9 mei 2019 - 19:45

Life is full of risks, and taking risks may even make life more interesting. Assessing, discussing, or preventing risks is a daily activity in organizations as well as on an individual level. Some of the risks we take are not seen as such, whereas they can be potentially harmful; there is always a risk of failing. Furthermore, some actions are considered normal by some people while they are considered risky by others. So, when do we consider a decision risky? Should risks be avoided? Or do they enrich our lives?

This Science Café elaborates on how risk behavior differs between individuals, how risk behavior develops within individuals, and within society as a whole. For example, is implementing self-driving cars a risk for the individual, and / or the society as a whole? The first speaker, dr. Margot Peeters, will present risk behavior and risky decision development in young people. She will specifically talk about the development of the brain and the influence of social context. The second speaker, Sven Nyholm, will talk about risky decisions in the context of self-driving cars.

Dr. Margot Peeters obtained her PhD at Utrecht University with a thesis on the role of automatic and controlled processes in the onset and continuation of alcohol use in adolescents. Currently, Margot Peeters is assistant professor at Utrecht University, where she works at the department of Youth in Changing Cultural Context and studies risk behavior from early adolescence to young adulthood.

Dr. Sven Nyholm is assistant professor at the Philosophy & Ethics department of Eindhoven University. He will address the ethics of self-driving cars and possible crashes, how to deal with coordination issues in mixed traffic involving both self-driving cars and human-driven cars, and if people can insist on driving regular cars, even if that is riskier than using self-driving cars.